My overview of Howard Hunt’s new book

[Pat Speer]

As I've often said, books by the professional murderers and liars in the CIA have no credibility. I don't see how they can have any value to researchers, or to truth buffs.

They might, however, be useful to gardeners with compost piles.

Au contraire, Myra. Hunt was true blue CIA. He went to court to deny his involvement in the Kennedy assassination. For him to belatedly acknowledge that other CIA officers may have been involved, and for him to acknowledge that one of his and the agency's biggest "succcesses", Operation Success in Guatemala, was in the long run a disaster, is quite a confession. As a result, I suspect future historians will put quite a bit of weight on Hunt's final words.

It seems to me Myra carefully worded her statement in terms of her perception of the book's value to researchers and/or truth buffs, not future historians. The terms are not always necessarily mutually inclusive, in my opinion.

Is the characterization of Operation Success as a "long run disaster" Howard Hunt's? Here is what he told Slate magazine in 2004:

Slate:

You started the CIA's first bureau in Mexico in 1949. Did you first start working on Guatemala from there?

Hunt:

In Mexico, I had a few agents from Washington with me, and I had recruited a few others … [including] a young Catholic priest. So the priest came to me one time, and he said, "I'm sending down several young men to Guatemala to get a view of the situation there. It's not good." He said, "My people were beaten up and put into jail, and then exiled from the country." And he sort of sat back expectantly. And I said, "That's certainly not right. I'll let Washington know what's going on in Guatemala." So I retold the story of Guatemala and the treatment of my young Catholic friend. I found that there was a lot of intense interest in what I had to say.

Slate:

We're talking about the time after 1952, the year Jacobo Arbenz was elected president of Guatemala.

Hunt:

He was in power then, yes. But his wife was by far the smarter of the two and sort of told him what to do. She was a convinced communist. … I waited for orders [from Washington]. A couple of [CIA and military] officers came down to join me, and it became apparent that there was going to be an effort to dislodge the communist management [laughs] of Guatemala. Which indeed happened. We set up shop and had some very bright guys working against Arbenz, and the long and short of it was that we got Arbenz defenestrated. Out the window. [Laughs]

Slate:

But President Arbenz ended up in exile—not really out the window?

Hunt:

Yeah. In Czechoslovakia. With his very bright and attractive wife.

Slate:

So it seems you were the architect for the Guatemalan operation?

Hunt:

It was mine because nobody else knew more than I did. I would say that I had more knowledge about it than anybody did. I knew all the players on both sides.

Slate:

How did you run the Guatemalan operation?

Hunt:

We set up the first Guatemalan operation/shop at Opa-Locka [airport in Miami, formerly an Army base]. There were three barracks, and we used the airstrip to fly in people from Guatemala and to send our people into Guatemala. These were known as "the black flights." They always occurred at night; they are a secret and officially do not exist as having happened.

Slate:

Do you think the Guatemala coup went well?

Hunt:

Yes—it did

. (Bold added) And I'm glad I kept Arbenz from being executed.

Slate:

How did you do that?

Hunt:

By passing the word out to the people at the airport who had Arbenz to "let him go."

Slate:

To whom did you give the word?

Hunt:

It was a mixed band of CIA and Guatemalans at the airport and their hatred for him was palpable.

Slate:

You were worried they would assassinate him right there?

Hunt:

Yeah. … And we'd [the CIA and the United States] get blamed for it.

Slate:

Some 200,000 civilians were killed in the civil war following the coup, which lasted for the next 40 years. Were all those deaths unforeseen?

Hunt:

Deaths? What deaths?

Slate:

Well, the civil war that ensued for the next 40 years after the coup.

Hunt:

Well, we should have done something we never do—we should have maintained a constant presence in Guatemala after getting rid of Arbenz.

Slate:

Did you ever actually meet Jacobo Arbenz?

Hunt:

They [he and his wife] were neighbors of mine—years later—on the same street in Montevideo, Uruguay.

Slate:

What were you doing there?

Hunt:

I was the CIA chief of station. They had come from [exile in] Czechoslovakia, and nobody in Washington had told me they were coming and so it was a big surprise to me, to my wife and me. We went to the country club for dinner one evening and lo and behold, the Arbenzes were seated a few tables away.

Slate:

What did you do?

Hunt:

Well, nothing. I sent a cable to Washington saying, "In the future when we have important arrivals, please let me know." It's the least they could do.

Future historians are more likely to rely on declassified CIA documents than the memoirs of Howard Hunt.

"After years of answering Freedom of Information Act requests with its standard "we can neither confirm nor deny that such records exist," the CIA has finally declassified some 1400 pages of over 100,000 estimated to be in its secret archives on the Guatemalan destabilization program."

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB4/index.html

Michael, this interview confirms that Hunt had doubts about the "success" of "Success." It's one thing to have a successful coup; it's another thing entirely to achieve a successful result from a coup. Hunt, whose job it was to line up the political basis for long term success, acknowledges in this interview and in his book that in the long term "Success" was a failure. You are correct, of course, that the CIA's declassified documents and internal histories, some of which I have read, by the way, will have much more influence over historians than anything Hunt says. But it is important that men like Hunt and Phillips--men who designed these operations--saw that they were not the unqualified successes the Executive Branch was led to believe. In an ideal world this would cause future administrations to think twice before overthrowing hostile or uncooperative regimes for the "good of its people." Unfortunately, we have Vietnam, Chile, and several other countries as further examples of this... The Cambodian slaughter could probably have been avoided if we hadn't been so hostile to Sihanouk. How many mistakes does it take before the U.S. learns the folly of intervention?

I suppose there are numerous "successes," where U.S. intervention led to a happy result. But I, for one, would be curious as heck to read the CIA report and analysis of our multiple interventions, to see if they've bothered to break down which interventions succeeded and why. And then see whether our involvement in Iraq was, by the CIA's own analysis, doomed for failure. I suspect the answer is YES. I'd like to think that these declassified documents, assuming they exist, will crawl out of Langley and become the Pentagon Papers of the Bush Administration. But that's just a fantasy.

[Gene Kelly]

I'm going to jump into this one with Jack and Myra - whatever his loyalties to individuals within the Agency, Hunt was

known as much for his ability to write fiction and make a buck on the side as his notoriously poor tradecraft and

security (from Miami to Spain).

Not many active Agency employees manage to make money on the side by promoting spy stories.

Given Hunt's history of money problems, poor health late in life and his well known practice of

"shopping" his name (after Watergate) along with purported secret knowledge about the Kennedy

assassination (telling more than one interviewerer what he knew was worth a million bucks) I would

tread very carefully in supposing this book was his effort to come clean with the world vs. a last effort

to market his name and make some money for his kids.

Not that he might not have heard some gossip, many did, but Hunt was a good fiction writer and I see

no reason why he could not come up with the names to throw into a book that a publisher

couldn't resist.

-- Larry

[Gene Kelly]

Larry:

Given your excellent research and insights, I'm very interested in your view of Howard Hunt. My instincts tell me he was an elitist "wanna be" (portrayed in Mailer's Harlots Ghost and books like The Company) as an original Yale OSS warrior close to Dulles, with aspirations towards CIA leadership. But he never quite impressed or succeeded. Yet he has what I intuit as an 'evil' nature and mean intent... I can't quite ignore him alone where suspicion and involvement are concerned. Mark Lane certainly was unconvinced. My instincts tell me he was up to his eyeballs in either the murder or coverup (or both)... and that he continued his 'dirty tricks' up and thru Watergate where he was finally disenfrachised by the intelligence community. Who knows what other nasty business he was responsible for. Please tell me what you see as his role in the assasination. Regards-- gene kelly

PS. Your book is marvelous

[Larry Hancock]

Hi Gene, thanks for the kind words!

I have to admit that wrestling with Hunt's reputation plus his true accomplishments is what caused me to add the appendix on he and

Barnes to the book...and with a lot of help from Pat....evaluate his possible contact or at least knowledge of Oswald via his 1963

Domestic Operations assignment.

I would agree with your assessment that his reputation far exceeded his skills (his tradecraft and security really were poor and

his political fixation on the ultra right didn't help his Cuba project work at all, Phillips had to step in and take over for him). It appears

that Barnes was his champion just as Dulles was Barne's. Both of them ended up sidelined after the Cuba project and it was likely

Dulles influence that got Barnes the Domestic Operations position and Barnes brought in Hunt. And it was Hunt's personal connection

to Artime and his history with Hecksher that got him at least a minor role in AMWORLD. Personally I suspect that Hunt was in some of

the secret Artime meetings going on in DC the week of November 22 and that explains why he was not with his family (as Lane brought

out to great advantage) but Hunt also was not going to talk about what he really had been doing....regardless of the consequence. Hunt

simply would not betray the Agency in that manner, he might talk about what he considered screw ups (as he did in his first book on the

Cuba project) but he would not disclose Agency secrets.

Hunt was loyal to the "cadre", at least to the officers he respected and he was fervantly dedicated to the anti-Communist

battle. I view him as less evil/mean than as dedicated/obsessive. I don't mean that in a good way, the same could be

said for Phillips, Morales etc. However in comparison people like Morales were far more effective, efficient and deadly. And

I don't see any sign that those officers had a lot of respect for Hunt's skills. The people who did support him were Dulles

and Barnes, who respected his political position, his dedication and his ability to write...they really did feel that he brought

some positives to the agencies (much as Phillips was supported for his writing later on).

OK, that was a long winded answer....but as to the conspiracy, personally I think it unlikely that the real operators like Morales would

involve Hunt any more than they would have brought in Sturgis or Barker (about whom Morales had little good to say). On the other hand

Hunt was well embedded among both the old boys like Dulles and Barnes - and perhaps more importantly in the "far eastern" clique

of Helliwell, Conein, Shackley etc to have heard the gossip that circulated about the conspiracy.

I would love to hear the inside gossip that I'm sure Hunt heard; however, given Hunt's loyalty to the types of views that resulted in

JFK being assassinated, I really don't think Hunt would ever pass on the truth. He might weave in elements of it into a good story,

one that would at least sound credible. But I don't think he would betray the "cadre", ever. On the other hand I think he could have told

us some very useful information about the agency and Oswald, possibly from first hand knowledge...but I don't think we are going to

see that in print either. All just opinion of course; perhaps I'm being overly skeptical?

-- Larry

La!rry:

Given your excellent research and insights, I'm very interested in your view of Howard Hunt. My instincts tell me he was an elitist "wanna be" (portrayed in Mailer's Harlots Ghost and books like The Company) as an original Yale OSS warrior close to Dulles, with aspirations towards CIA leadership. But he never quite impressed or succeeded. Yet he has what I intuit as an 'evil' nature and mean intent... I can't quite ignore him alone where suspicion and involvement are concerned. Mark Lane certainly was unconvinced. My instincts tell me he was up to his eyeballs in either the murder or coverup (or both)... and that he continued his 'dirty tricks' up and thru Watergate where he was finally disenfrachised by the intelligence community. Who knows what other nasty business he was responsible for. Please tell me what you see as his role in the assasination. Regards-- gene kelly

PS. Your book is marvelous

[Gene Kelly]

Thank you, Larry. Unfortunately, the pictures of tramps who resemble Hunt, and the mysterious man in the trench coat/fedora ("central casting") crossing the street just after the murder, represent a serious tease to our imagination. He's apparently sponsored by right-wing executives (Dulles et al) who appear to be in the 'Cowboy' camp. Hunt's postings in Mexico, his affiliations with Cuban nationals, supposed motive (post bay of Pigs fiasco) and the intrigue of Watergate (i.e. what were they really after) seem to add up. His wife dies mysteriously in a plane crash; its incredible that he's one of few humans who can claim to black-mailing a president. Even the Harvard versus Yale thing. So many coincidences. But I do understand the patriotic Agency man (an original OSS member)... one -while somewhat inept- who is committed to keeping the secrets and protecting the organization. But I can't see him as the deadly threat which Morales posed. So regretfully I scratch him off of the proverbial list. Thanks again for your thoughts.

[Ron Ecker]

Wouldn't an agent like Hunt make a competent paymaster in such a plot? After all, delivering money to people is not all that complicated. That's the role that Marita Lorenz personally witnessed him playing in Dallas (according to Marita Lorenz). Hunt's wife was apparently delivering money when she died.

[Chris Brown]

a last effort to market his name and make some money for his kids.

Did he ever get his kids straightened out about where he was on 11/22/63? He testified that he had trouble convincing them that he wasn't in Dallas, when he had testified earlier that the kids were with him that day. I imagine this only confused the kids more than ever.

Ron

As you know, Mark Lane's PLAUSIBLE DENIAL tells the story in detail.

Hunt claimed to sue the newspaper because the suggestion he was part of the Kennedy

assassination was hurtful to his children, who saw him in Washington on 11/22/63.......

but when put on the stand the kids said he was gone all weekend, so he had no alibi.......

I don't believe that Lane ever put Hunt's kids on the st

What won the case for Lane is that Hunt's defense was entirely based on Hunt's whereabouts on Nov 22, '63.

They managed to get some BS "alibi" from other CIA spooks that they saw him in DC that day, not in Dallas.

So Lane brilliantly decided to focus on proving Hunt was in Dallas the night of Nov 21.

He got a deposition from CIA asset Marita Lorenz placing Hunt (and Sturgis) in Dallas, handing out money or weapons or both to various thugs at some motel hours before the murder.

The jury found that there was sufficient proof that Hunt was in Dallas on Nov 21, '63. Therefore, the CIA was involved in President Kennedy's murder. We don't hear much about that in the media do we?

The jury forewoman Leslie Armstrong stated to reporters:

"Mr. Lane was asking us to do something very difficult. He was asking us to believe that John Kennedy had been killed by our own government. Yet when we examined the evidence closely, we were compelled to conclude that the CIA had indeed killed President Kennedy."

http://www.skepticfiles.org/socialis/jfklane.htm

(Oh, and I don't believe Hunt ever got his own kids to believe his lie about his Nov 22 whereabouts. I think it remained a big issue between them.)

Myra,

If my memory serves.

After Mark Lane questioned the alibi's given by Hunts Company buddies, Mark asked Hunt directly why he would not call the people who could give him a cast iron alibi. His children, who Mr Hunt said he had spent the afternoon with in the family home watching the the events of the day unfold on TV.

Chris Brown

[Ron Ecker]

And an interesting comment to it from David Hunt, E.Howard Hunt's son: http://www.tapsns.com/blog/?p=38#comment-1272

Look for an article soon to be in the LA times that will piece a good portion of the JFKA together. EHH confided this information to his sons 4 years before his death.

David Hunt posted this heads up on February 7. It's now February 26. I'm beginning to think that it's not going to happen. And why am I not surprised?

[Myra Bronstein]

a last effort to market his name and make some money for his kids.

Did he ever get his kids straightened out about where he was on 11/22/63? He testified that he had trouble convincing them that he wasn't in Dallas, when he had testified earlier that the kids were with him that day. I imagine this only confused the kids more than ever.

Ron

As you know, Mark Lane's PLAUSIBLE DENIAL tells the story in detail.

Hunt claimed to sue the newspaper because the suggestion he was part of the Kennedy

assassination was hurtful to his children, who saw him in Washington on 11/22/63.......

but when put on the stand the kids said he was gone all weekend, so he had no alibi.......

I don't believe that Lane ever put Hunt's kids on the st

What won the case for Lane is that Hunt's defense was entirely based on Hunt's whereabouts on Nov 22, '63.

They managed to get some BS "alibi" from other CIA spooks that they saw him in DC that day, not in Dallas.

So Lane brilliantly decided to focus on proving Hunt was in Dallas the night of Nov 21.

He got a deposition from CIA asset Marita Lorenz placing Hunt (and Sturgis) in Dallas, handing out money or weapons or both to various thugs at some motel hours before the murder.

The jury found that there was sufficient proof that Hunt was in Dallas on Nov 21, '63. Therefore, the CIA was involved in President Kennedy's murder. We don't hear much about that in the media do we?

The jury forewoman Leslie Armstrong stated to reporters:

"Mr. Lane was asking us to do something very difficult. He was asking us to believe that John Kennedy had been killed by our own government. Yet when we examined the evidence closely, we were compelled to conclude that the CIA had indeed killed President Kennedy."

http://www.skepticfiles.org/socialis/jfklane.htm

(Oh, and I don't believe Hunt ever got his own kids to believe his lie about his Nov 22 whereabouts. I think it remained a big issue between them.)

Myra,

If my memory serves.

After Mark Lane questioned the alibi's given by Hunts Company buddies, Mark asked Hunt directly why he would not call the people who could give him a cast iron alibi. His children, who Mr Hunt said he had spent the afternoon with in the family home watching the the events of the day unfold on TV.

Chris Brown

That makes sense Chris. It would be a logical question for a lawyer to ask. And Lane seems like a damn good lawyer.

Do you recall what lie Hunt used to explain why his children weren't testifying for him? Were they too young at that point?

[Pat Speer]

As pointed out earlier, Lane changed tactics when he realized how many witnesses were willing to say Hunt was in D.C. on the 22nd, and questioned instead where Hunt was on the 21st. I don't believe Hunt responded to that, which is one of the reasons he lost the case. If I remember correctly, his children testified in his defense in the first trial, but had no recollection where he was on the 21st, and failed to testify in his defense in the second trial.

As far as his actual whereabouts on the 22nd, I suspect he told the truth and was in D.C. However, I find it very interesting that, years before he was talking about C-Day, Harry Ruiz-Williams was hawking a story that he was meeting with Hunt and Lyman Kirkpatrick, among others, on the 22nd. If Williams is reliable, and his contributions to Ultimate Sacrifice are to be trusted, then one should figure out whether this story is true, or whether Williams was mis-quoted. If Hunt was the black sheep within the agency many now purport him to have been, there is no way he was was at a high-level meeting on the 22nd. If, on the other hand, his role as covert ops chief for the Domestic Operations Division was not purely a propaganda effort, as Hunt insists in his memoirs, but was instead a high-level "black" position, through which he was trying to turn foreign nationals on U.S. soil into U.S. operatives, his presence at a high-level meeting re Cuba on the 22nd makes perfect sense. If Hunt's role as covert ops chief did indeed entail the responsibility of turning Cuba's ambassador to the U.N., Carlos Lechuga, to a U.S. asset, it is an amazing coincidence that Oswald had purportedly made a bee-line for Lechuga's mistress, Silvia Duran, in Mexico. And had reportedly seduced her.

It could very well be that Oswald was a dangle used by Phillips to test Joannides' anti-Castro people, and was "loaned-out" to Hunt to try and turn Duran, as a way of getting at Lechuga. It could also be that some of the anti-Castro people thought Oswald was actually pro-Castro, and set him up as the patsy, not realizing he was CIA. If so, it would explain why some of the CIA pushed that it was Castro, while those higher-up (those in the know) backed off (as they knew Oswald was their guy). Anyhow, the possibilities are endlessly fascinating.

What "secrets" Hunt knew went with him to his grave. But I find it fascinating that both Hunt and Phillips made statements towards the end of their lives that they suspected an intelligence agent's involvement in the assassination.

[Douglas Caddy]

As I've often said, books by the professional murderers and liars in the CIA have no credibility. I don't see how they can have any value to researchers, or to truth buffs.

They might, however, be useful to gardeners with compost piles.

Au contraire, Myra. Hunt was true blue CIA. He went to court to deny his involvement in the Kennedy assassination. For him to belatedly acknowledge that other CIA officers may have been involved, and for him to acknowledge that one of his and the agency's biggest "succcesses", Operation Success in Guatemala, was in the long run a disaster, is quite a confession. As a result, I suspect future historians will put quite a bit of weight on Hunt's final words.

February 27, 2007

In the Name of Empire: Dirty Tricks, Sabotage and Propaganda

Howard Hunt and the National Memory System

By JEFF NYGAARD

www.counterpunch.org

http://www.counterpunch.org/nygaard02272007.html

E. Howard Hunt died on January 23rd. Hunt was famous for his role in the Watergate burglaries that brought an end to the presidency of Richard Nixon in 1974. Although this is what he is famous for, it is not the most important thing to know about this man. The London Guardian led off their obituary of Hunt with these words: "The infamous part that the espionage agent E. Howard Hunt played in the 1972 Watergate burglary-which eventually brought down President Nixon-earned him 33 months in prison. Yet Hunt, who has died aged 88, spent a career in clandestine activities so nefarious that he was lucky not to have spent much longer behind bars."

I don't think Hunt was "lucky" at all. It's far more serious than that. Let's have a look at how he is remembered in the "National Memory System" and the political/intellectual culture it serves.

National Public Radio ran an obituary for Hunt on the day of this passing, and it began with these words:"E. Howard Hunt, one of the key figures who organized the Watergate break in, has died at the age of 88. He was a long time CIA operative. He helped plan both a coup in Guatemala in 1954 and later the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. Howard Hunt served 33 months in prison after he pleaded guilty to conspiracy for his role in the Watergate burglary."

And that's the last we hear from NPR about either Guatemala or Cuba, or any of the rest of Hunt's long career in the CIA. NPR chose to devote its entire segment to an interview with reporter Bob Woodward, who "broke the Watergate story in the Washington Post" in 1973. So, we see what's important-and not important-to NPR.

The New York Times did a little better in their lengthy obituary the next day. They said of Hunt that "His field was political warfare: dirty tricks, sabotage and propaganda." And, although most of their story was also about Watergate, they did devote one full paragraph to Guatemala. Here it is:

"In 1954, Mr. Hunt helped plan the covert operation that overthrew the elected president of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz. ''What we wanted to do was to have a terror campaign,' Mr. Hunt said in a CNN documentary on the cold war, 'to terrify Arbenz particularly, to terrify his troops.' Though the operation succeeded, it ushered in 40 years of military repression in Guatemala."

Two sentences later the Times adds that "Not until 1960 was Mr. Hunt involved in an operation that changed history."

Remember that this obituary was being written in the winter of 2007, at a time when the United States is officially engaged in a "War on Terror," and supposedly trying to "spread democracy" around the world. The conventional thinking has it that this is what the U.S., as a Beacon of Democracy, has always done. Yet when a prominent government official dies, the fact that he was engaged in an official U.S. terror campaign for the purpose of overthrowing a democratically-elected government-and one that "succeeded"-merits a single paragraph in the nation's newspaper of record. Indeed, it is implied that such behavior did not even "change history."

The operation that DID "change history," according to the Times, was the secret campaign, ordered by Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, "to alter or abolish the revolutionary government of Fidel Castro in Cuba." The Times tells us that "Mr. Hunt's assignment was to create a provisional Cuban government that would be ready to take power once the CIA's cadre of Cuban shock troops invaded the island." This was the infamous Bay of Pigs operation (Code Name: "Operation Zapata"), which used the same cast of (U.S.) characters as the Guatemala campaign 6 years earlier. The Guatemala campaign was codenamed "PB Success," and Zapata was expected to meet with the same "success." It did not, of course, with the result that, as the Times put it, the careers of Hunt and the others "who planned and executed the Bay of Pigs debacle in April 1961 were damaged or destroyed, as was the CIA's reputation for derring-do."

The Oxford English Dictionary defines "derring-do" as "daring action or feats; heroic courage." Now, if it is true that the CIA's reputation among the general population in 1960 was for "derring-do," rather than for terror and subversion of democracy, it can only be because United Statesians were then, as they are now, sensationally ignorant of what the CIA had actually been doing in the previous 14 years.

A Tiny Bit of the CIA's History

The CIA was formed in 1947. In the 14 years from then until its reputation for "derring-do" was cemented in the public mind, the CIA engaged in all of the following tactics in various places around the world:

* Creation and management of CIA schools, where military and police were trained in all sorts of things, including torture techniques;

* Infiltration and manipulation of selected groups, such as political parties, youth groups, unions, and much more;

* Manipulation of media, up to and including direct ownership of media outlets in other countries;

* Economic pressure, exerted through US government agencies, private U.S. corporations, and international financial institutions, and;

* The "dirty tricks, sabotage and propaganda" that the Times told us was E. Howard Hunt's "field."

The targets of CIA operations in the years 1947 to 1960, using all of the tactics listed above, included: China, Italy, Greece, the Philippines, Korea, Albania, Germany, Iran, Costa Rica, Syria, Indonesia, British Guiana, the Soviet Union, Italy, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Haiti, Algeria, Ecuador, The Congo, Peru, and the Dominican Republic.

What Lessons Can Be Learned from These Obituaries?

This sordid history continued in the following years, with E. Howard Hunt playing his small but important role, until Hunt was tried and convicted-and spent 33 months in federal prison-for burglary, conspiracy and wiretapping aimed at the Democratic National Committee. Yet he received no prison time, was never charged, apparently received no negative consequences whatsoever, for his well-documented roles in various campaigns of terror and subversion of democracy. The lesson: Violations against the property of powerful people in the United States have consequences, while much more serious violations against the lives (and governments!) of less-powerful people in other countries do not.

Here's another, related lesson: Terror campaigns that overthrow democracies do not "change history." But an operation that damages the careers of powerful government officials and/or damages the (bizarre and distorted) reputation of the agency that runs the campaigns that overthrow those democracies? Now, THAT changes "history."

Now, here's our Lesson Number Three: Citizens in the U.S. must not be allowed to know much about covert operations and the casts of characters that carry them out because, if we did, we might all begin to see patterns over time, and might begin to understand a little better what is really involved in constructing and maintaining a global empire. The targets of these "covert" operations certainly know what is involved. Indeed, the combination of their knowledge of U.S. behavior and our own ignorance goes a long way in explaining the bewilderment revealed in the oft-posed question that came to life on September 11, 2001: "Why do they hate us?"

As we consider the nature of the distorted National Memory System that is revealed by the obituaries of E. Howard Hunt and others--the obituaries following the December 7th death of Jeane Kirkpatrick offer similar insights into that System--some important questions come to mind: Who are the E. Howard Hunts of today, the men and women who are carrying out the "dirty tricks, sabotage and propaganda" that violate the values of most of the good people in whose name they are supposedly being carried out? Which journalists are following the activities of the covert operatives of today? Which news organizations are publishing these details of empire?

"Late in life," the Times tells us, Mr. Hunt "said he had no regrets, beyond the Bay of Pigs." Which is, no doubt, why the London Guardian calls him "lucky." But it's not luck. Our job of people of conscience in the United States is to see if we can create a culture where the E. Howard Hunts of the world not only feel regrets for their careers of terror and democracy-destruction, but are brought to justice for them.

Jeff Nygaard is a writer and activist in Minneapolis, Minnesota who publishes a free email newsletter on politics, media, and culture called Nygaard Notes, found at www.nygaardnotes.org

http://www.counterpunch.org/nygaard02272007.html

[Douglas Caddy]

As I've often said, books by the professional murderers and liars in the CIA have no credibility. I don't see how they can have any value to researchers, or to truth buffs.

They might, however, be useful to gardeners with compost piles.

Au contraire, Myra. Hunt was true blue CIA. He went to court to deny his involvement in the Kennedy assassination. For him to belatedly acknowledge that other CIA officers may have been involved, and for him to acknowledge that one of his and the agency's biggest "succcesses", Operation Success in Guatemala, was in the long run a disaster, is quite a confession. As a result, I suspect future historians will put quite a bit of weight on Hunt's final words.

My friend, the Watergate conspirator

A personal account of Richard Nixon aide E. Howard Hunt.

By William F. Buckley Jr.

Columnist, author and TV host WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR. is the founder of National Review. This is adapted from his forward to "American Spy," a new memoir by E. Howard Hunt, a former CIA operative.

March 4, 2007

Los Angeles Times

I MET E. HOWARD HUNT soon after arriving in Mexico City in 1951. I was a deep-cover agent for the CIA — deep-cover describing, I was given to understand, a category whose members were told to take extreme care not to permit any grounds for suspicion that one was in service to the CIA.

The rule was (perhaps it is different now) that on arriving at one's targeted post, one was informed which single human being in the city knew that you were in the CIA. That person would tell you what to do for the duration of your service in that city; he would answer such questions as you wished to put to him and would concern himself with all aspects of your duty life.

The man I was told to report to (by someone whose real name I did not know) was E. Howard Hunt. He ostensibly was working in the U.S. Embassy as a cultural affairs advisor, if I remember correctly. In any event, I met him in his office and found him greatly agreeable but also sternly concerned with duty. He would here and there give me special minor assignments, but I soon learned that my principal job was to translate from Spanish a huge and important book by defector Eudocio Ravines.

Ravines had been an important member of the Peruvian Communist Party in the '40s. He had brought forth a book called "The Road From Yenan," an autobiographical account of his exciting life in the service of the communist revolution and an extended account of the reasons for his defection.

It was a lazy assignment, in that we were not given a deadline, so the work slogged on during and after visits, averaging one every week, by Ravines to the house that I and my wife had occupied that used to be called San Angel Inn — post-revolution, Villa Obregon. (We lived and worked at Calero No. 91.) It is a part of Mexico City on the southern slopes, leading now to the university (which back then was in central Mexico City).

It was only a couple of weeks after our meeting that Howard introduced me to his wife, Dorothy, and their first-born child, Lisa. I learned that Howard had graduated from Brown University and was exercised by left-wing activity there, by the faculty, the administration and students. This made him especially interested in what I had to say about my alma mater. My book, "God and Man at Yale," was published in mid-October 1951, and I shook free for one week's leave to travel to New York to figure in the promotion.

I persevered in my friendship with the Hunt family. But in early spring of 1952, when the project with Ravines was pretty well completed, I called on Howard to tell him I had decided to quit the agency. I had yielded to the temptation to go into journalism.

Our friendship was firm, and Howard came several times to Stamford, Conn., where my wife and I camped down, and visited. I never knew — he was very discreet — what he was up to, but assumed, correctly, that he was continuing his work for the CIA. I was greatly moved by Dorothy's message to me that she and Howard were joining the Catholic communion, and they asked me to serve as godfather for their children.

Years passed without my seeing Howard. But then came the Watergate scandal — in which Howard was accused of masterminding the break-in at Democratic Party headquarters, among other things, and was ultimately convicted of burglary, conspiracy and wiretapping — and the dreadful accident over Midway Airport in Chicago that killed Dorothy in December 1972. I learned of this while watching television with my wife, and it was through television that I also learned that she had named me as personal representative of her estate in the event of her demise.

That terrible event came at a high point in the Watergate affair. Then I had a phone call from Howard, with whom I hadn't been in touch for several years. He asked to see me.

He startled me by telling me that he intended to disclose to me everything he knew about the Watergate affair, including much that (he said) had not yet been revealed to congressional investigators.

What especially arrested me was his saying that his dedication to the project had included a hypothetical agreement to contrive the assassination of syndicated muckraker Jack Anderson, if the high command at the Nixon White House thought this necessary. I also remember his keen surprise that the White House hadn't exercised itself to protect and free him and his collaborators arrested in connection with the Watergate enterprise. He simply could not understand this moral default.

It was left that I would take an interest, however remote, in his household of children, now that he was headed for jail. (Neither he nor Dorothy had any brothers or sisters.)

Howard served 33 months. I visited him once. I thought back on the sad contrast between Hunt, E.H., federal prisoner, and Hunt, E.H., special assistant to the U.S. ambassador in Mexico, and his going on to a number of glittering assignments but ultimately making that fateful wrong turn in the service of President Nixon, for which his suffering was prolonged and wretchedly protracted.

I prefer to remember him back in his days as a happy warrior, a productive novelist, an efficient administrator and a wonderful companion.

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